Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

The Thousand Faces of Dunjia Blu-ray Movie Review

Paging Dr. Lao.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 2, 2018

There are some directors who pretty much just demand surrender from the viewer. One thinks of icons like Fellini and Buñuel, where fantastic imagery simply needs to be accepted on its own terms, even when it’s patently divorced from “reality” (a decidedly relative term in either of those directors’ works, at least at times). Tsui Hark might also be lumped into this group, and while his visual acuity is one of his strengths, there’s another kind of surrender required, namely just giving into to certain narrative excesses, with storylines that are on occasion overblown and (some might argue) incomprehensible. Tsui is “only” the writer and producer of The Thousand Faces of Dunjia, a fantasy epic that shares at least some elements in common with Tsui’s last fantasy epic, Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back. Once again, an almost folkloristic ambience permeates this tale of an ancient clan intent on maintaining control of a priceless relic which may lead to the Apocalypse if it falls into the wrong hands. Also as with Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back, The Thousand Faces of Dunjia is long on visual spectacle, with an almost nonstop array of arresting CGI and (occasional) practical effects, with an almost equal and opposite deficit in the storytelling arena. The film is an odd one in terms of its narrative structure, darting off on a moment’s notice into what seem to be unconnected vignettes that introduce a gamut of characters. This is another film where one’s love for and/or tolerance of “shiny objects” is going to weigh perhaps more heavily than usual into whether or not the film as a whole is appreciated.

Kind of weirdly, The Thousand Faces of Dunjia seems to “borrow” an element from Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, the precursor to Tsui’s contribution to this kinda sorta franchise, with a mutant blowfish that nearly takes out an inn. The fish has become an obsessive interest of a new constable in town, Dao Yichang (Aarif Lee Rahman), a muscle bound guy whose straight arrow approach doesn’t sit well with his superiors, resulting in him being given a bunch of fake wanted posters and told that he can’t return to the constabulary until he has captured them all. Of course, one of the fake illustrations looks exactly like a huge hairy ogre who just happens to be carrying around an equally weird looking fish.

That set up might indicate that the main focus is going to be a detective story, a la Tsui’s Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame and/or Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon. But surrender is necessary once again as Hark’s screenplay starts darting hither and yon to introduce not just a gaggle of other characters, but a number of other competing subplots as well.

Among these elements is the pursuit by Zhuge Fengyun (Da Peng) of an unknown leader of his clan, a promised savior who will be able to activate the priceless relic. That pursuit leads him to a captive he nicknames Circle (Zhou Dongyu), a seemingly sweet and preternaturally shy girl who can nonetheless transform into something similar to a giant mutant peacock (there are a lot of giant mutants trundling around this enterprise). Also weaved into this labyrinthine tale is Zhuge’s cohort Iron Dragonfly (Ni Ni), who explores an underground cavern where another mutant monster is awoken.

There are a number of fun and sometimes even funny vignettes scattered throughout The Thousand Faces of Dunjia, but as its very title may suggest, this is a film with a lot of characters and probably inarguably too many competing stories, even though to his credit Tsui does at least attempt to bring all of the disparate elements together. The presentational style here is deliberately cheeky, with “chapters” that are announced via things like ideographs sketched into the sand as a character walks by, among other whimsical approaches. But the problem here is that no labeling of a “chapter” comes close to sufficing in explaining character back stories, how all of them are interrelated, and (frankly) what anything has to do with anything else.

That leaves the bulk of the “heavy lifting” to director Yuen Woo-Ping, who offers a nearly nonstop smorgasbord of visual wonderment. Along with the quasi-aliens that are all over the place, Yuen features supposedly “human” characters, like a concubine, who turn out to be something else entirely, as well as other characters (like Iron Dragonfly) who wear disguises at times. The film has a breathlessness that probably helps it to breeze by its narrative hurdles, but this is one entry where disengaging the rational mind may be the best approach. In other words: surrender.

The Thousand Faces of Dunjia Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Thousand Faces of Dunjia is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer. The IMDb lists this as having been digitally captured with Red cameras, at source resolutions of up to 6K, and with a 2K DI. This shares yet another element with other Tsui films released domestically on Blu-ray, namely that it evidently had a 3D release overseas, but has not been granted a 3D Blu-ray release in this market (a cursory search of our database suggests that no foreign 3D Blu-ray releases have come out yet, either). This is a beautifully detailed presentation that offers excellent fine detail in everything from a (yep, you guessed it, mutant) spider in the opening credits sequence to the finery of the many sumptuous costumes. Despite the prevalence of CGI, the imagery is typically rather sharp, without some of the inherent softness that tends to intrude in material that has a lot of green screen elements or other digital additions. The palette is extremely varied and offers everything from some dusty yellows in a busy marketplace to deep cobalt blues in the underground cavern. Some of the creatures are intentionally pretty goofy looking, something that adds to an overall comedic ambience, but even here the rendering of textures and details is quite impressive.

The Thousand Faces of Dunjia Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Thousand Faces of Dunjia features an explosive DTS:X mix in the original Mandarin, one that offers fantastic placement of effects as early as some of the mastheads of the production companies. While the fight scenes offer an expected glut of surround activity, and some nice midair placement when various characters hover before they kick, even supposedly "calmer" sequences like some in a cacophonous marketplace feature a lot of rear and side channel activity. Sillier things like the mutant fish flopping around provide little jolts of LFE, and there are some more "serious" exploitations of low frequency elements in more Apocalyptic moments. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout this very enjoyable track.

The Thousand Faces of Dunjia Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making Of (1080i; 2:29)


• Teaser Trailer (1080p; 1:16)


• Trailer (1080p; 1:29)

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA releases, the disc has been authored so that the supplements follow one another automatically. After these three play, the disc then moves on automatically to trailers for other Well Go USA releases. Those other trailers also play at disc boot up.

The Thousand Faces of Dunjia Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm repeatedly on record as stating that "shiny object" films typically tend to divert me enough that I'm willing to overlook narrative inconsistencies. That's certainly the case with The Thousand Faces of Dunjia. The story never really makes a whale (mutant or otherwise) of a lot of sense, but the film marauds through such a series of fantastic visions that it's kind of easy not to care about that all that much. Technical merits are strong, and with caveats noted, The Thousand Faces of Dunjia comes Recommended.